鈥淭HIS is a huge gamble for the US administration. Politically, war is going to change US-Europe relations, it鈥檚 going to change the Middle East, it鈥檚 certainly going to change Iraq. You wouldn鈥檛 think they鈥檇 have a military gamble going on at the same time.鈥�
Harvey Sapolsky, director of the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is referring to the almost total reliance that the US military now has on precision weapons 鈥� 鈥渟mart鈥� bombs that can be guided accurately to their intended targets and, just as importantly, away from others.
The outcome of the Gulf conflict will depend to an unprecedented degree on the success of this technology. And with it, the political ambitions of the US and Britain after the war, when they attempt to rebuild a nation and garner world support for their actions.
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During the Gulf war of 1991 the smart bombs that dominated the headlines were reserved for difficult missions and special operations. This time, around 90 per cent of the bombs hauled to Iraq鈥檚 border are smart weapons. And in 1991, the US had twice as many air and ground forces amassed for war as it has this time, even though the objective then was simply to beat back Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The reduction in manpower is symptomatic of how the military has changed since the days when the strategy was simply to build up an overwhelming force of heavy artillery and tanks.
Now the emphasis is on using small groups of ground troops to pick out key targets and call in precision bombers to destroy them. 鈥淚nstead of overwhelming force, there is the promise of military magic with precision guided weapons,鈥� says Sapolsky.
But there is more at stake than just military success. Preventing bombs from killing civilians and destroying infrastructure will pay dividends after the war has concluded, by fostering the public support among Iraqis that will be vital for a smooth transition to a new leadership.
What鈥檚 more, with many governments and large sections of the public around the world opposing the war, politicians are desperate to avoid harrowing TV images of innocent men, women and children being killed as a result of military blunders. 鈥淕iven that public support in Britain and the wider world outside the US is borderline, avoiding having massacres is crucial,鈥� says Tim Ripley, a defence analyst at the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies at Lancaster University in Britain.
These concerns have been taxing the US Air Force in recent months. Last month, tensions within the service became public when internal discussions over how any air campaign against Iraq should be fought were leaked to the media.
Traditionalists within the USAF favour destroying not just military sites but crucial pieces of infrastructure such as power plants and bridges. Modernisers want to fight as 鈥渃lean鈥� a war as possible by attacking only targets designed to weaken Saddam Hussein鈥檚 army without killing or injuring civilians or damaging any civilian infrastructure. The modernisers appear to have won.
But by following this strategy, the US military will be taking a much greater risk than during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, says Ripley. The US鈥檚 effectiveness to fight quickly and successfully relies entirely on these precision weapons. 鈥淚f this stuff doesn鈥檛 work as advertised the war will drag on,鈥� he says.
Precision weapons first proved they could work in 1972, during the Vietnam war. Years of attacks on the Than Hoa bridge near Hanoi in North Vietnam, involving some 800 sorties and the loss of 10 planes, failed to destroy the target. Eventually, four planes attacked it using laser-guided bombs, and the bridge fell.
Despite their success, however, laser-guided weapons did not gain instant acceptance. In the 1991 Gulf war, only 10 per cent of the bombs dropped by allied forces were guided. The type of laser-guided bombs used then work on a simple principle. Before the bomb is dropped, an infrared laser 鈥渋lluminates鈥� a spot on the target. This laser can be wielded by friendly troops on the ground, the plane carrying the bomb, or another plane. As soon as the bomb is released from the plane, an infrared sensor in its nose picks out the laser spot and sends signals that control fins in its tail to steer it to the target.
The trouble is that laser-guided bombs are only accurate when the sky is clear. If cloud, or a sand storm, obscures either the targeting laser or the bomb鈥檚 view of the target, then the weapon can go off course and wreak havoc. This happened during the last Gulf war and in Kosovo.
In an effort to overcome this weakness, the US has developed all-weather guided bombs, most of which use signals from Global Position System satellites to work out where they are and where they should be going. GPS signals pass through cloud without being distorted, so bombs guided by them can be used regardless of the weather. Air-force armourers make these bombs by taking a traditional 鈥渄umb鈥� bomb and bolting on a kit comprising a GPS receiver and set of fins. The most common of the kits, called JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) costs less than $20,000.
GPS-guided bombs were highly successful during the Kosovo conflict, with 96 per cent hitting their targets. Most of the failures were attributed to a fault with the bomb-release mechanism.
But this success rate is by no means guaranteed. With the right know-how and equipment, Iraqi troops could make smart bombs stray off course. Transmitters for sale on the Internet can be tuned to emit high-powered microwaves to drown the weak GPS signals. It鈥檚 a risky strategy for the defenders, but it could frustrate attacking aircraft, says Richard Langley, an expert on GPS positioning at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada. Tests on JDAMs show they are accurate to within 13 metres if they use the GPS signal. Jam them and accuracy drops to 30 metres, which could be enough to make a pilot abort an attack on vehicles or troops parked near to civilians.
GPS-guided bombs are designed to get round this problem, at least in part, by using a system based on high-precision gyroscopes to monitor the speed and direction of the bomb. This system can take control of the bomb if the GPS signal is lost for any reason. Some bombs have now been fitted with anti-jamming software as well.
The military value of precision weapons is clear. Hitting targets more reliably means that fewer aircraft and their crews are put at risk to get the job done. And aside from the clear human cost, 鈥渁 bomb on the wrong person is a bomb wasted鈥�, points out Andrew Brookes, an aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
However, the technology won鈥檛 work unless other basic military requirements are met. Without good intelligence, for instance, civilians will be hit just as they were in 1991. 鈥淭here was a bunker in Baghdad that was clearly designed for either military or police purposes. It was buried very deeply and they sent in one laser-guided bomb after the other,鈥� recalls Owen Cote, associate director of security studies at MIT. 鈥淭hen they found out it was being used by the families of the military.鈥� The strikes killed 400 civilians. 鈥淭here are always going to be mistakes,鈥� says Brookes. 鈥淧eople will misidentify targets, they鈥檒l get tired, they鈥檒l be afraid. You can鈥檛 get away from that.鈥�
Whether the US鈥檚 intelligence capability has improved since 1991 remains to be seen. Satellites and reconnaissance planes will continue to eavesdrop on email and phone conversations to work out who is where and what they are saying. But the most significant step may be the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as the Predator. Satellites can only snoop on an area during the short time their orbits take them overhead. But UAVs can be flown from Kuwait, Turkey or Jordan to provide what the military calls 鈥減ersistent surveillance鈥�. Real-time video from a Predator can reveal the difference between a convoy of military vehicles and a convoy of refugees. If necessary the drones can even take on the role of a precision bomber, and fire air-to-ground missiles.
Precision weaponry stands to make the indiscriminate carpet-bombing that dominated earlier conflicts such as the Vietnam war a thing of the past. But building a whole military strategy around smart weapons is a big risk. For instance, the USAF has broken with tradition by drawing up a list of only purely military targets in Iraq. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e made a conscious decision to avoid striking certain targets that would normally have been on the list, like power plants, bridges and water purification plants. All these were targets last time,鈥� says Cote.
While that makes the hawks in the service nervous, avoiding such targets, and doing everything possible to limit civilian casualties, is key to the political success of an attack on Iraq. As Brookes puts it: 鈥淚f you show the world you鈥檝e done your best to avoid it, they鈥檒l be on your side.鈥� The US has invested a lot of money in smart warfare, Brookes says. 鈥淲e鈥檒l just have to see now if the technology works.鈥�